RE: carts vs. CIS

["Lucans, Gunars" <gunars@spss.com>]

<x-charset windows-1252>So far, I've only been considering dye inks and the price comparison was
based on Epson carts.  I've only had the 890 for a few months, but so far
for the images I've been printing, it looks like I'm using up one black cart
for every 5 color carts.  At buy.com (the best prices I've found), the color
T008 cart goes for $13.89 and the black T007 goes for $17.16.  That works
out to $17.32 for a color cart plus 1/5 of a black cart to go with it.  The
Niagara CIS with a 4oz set of dye inks at MediaStreet.com goes for about
$265 which is roughly equivalent to 15 or so sets of carts.

That's considering only the cost of materials.  According to some comments,
the number of prints I could get with 4oz of bulk inks is roughly the same
as from 10 carts.  This would put the breakeven point a bit further out.

All in all, I'm sure the CIS system is the way to go (I placed my order
today).  The main reason for this excercise was to get a feel for the
capacities on my new Epson printer.  With my previous HP printer, I was
using only a few carts a year (larger carts and fewer prints).  I wanted to
make sure that I would be using up the 4oz set in a reasonable timeframe
(under a year) for the sort of stuff I'm doing.

Gunars


-----Original Message-----
From:	Berry Ives [mailto:yvesberia@earthlink.net]

I'm not sure of your calculation of the breakeven point.  I think that would
be 10 pairs of cartridges (black and colors) per set of 4 oz bottles,
wouldn't it?  I'm not up on cart prices, but last time I looked at them they
cost about $55/pair, and more for the pigments, which is what I would be
comparing.  Ten pairs would cost $550.  The bulk pigments cost me $75 for
four 4-oz bottles, unless the price went up.  The CIS system itself cost me
$125.  So, for $200, you are good for 10 pairs of cartridges, which cost you
$550 or more.  So it looks to me that the bread even is at maybe 4 pairs of
cartridges.  

At that point, the CIS system has paid for itself, and the savings are about
1:4 after that point.

Am I missing something?

In addition to the above is the issue of pigment archival quality, which I
don't think you get for $55/pair on carts.




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